He nodded at her notepad. “Don’t you want to write this down? I’ll wait.”
Everly ignored his sarcasm and set to jotting down some notes. Then she gave herself an internal shake and plastered her best professional smile on her face. “I’m only trying to establish a baseline for my story.”
Hawke pushed away from the door and approached her, not stopping until he was so close she could touch him if she so chose. She found herself staring at the smooth, tan skin at the base of his throat. He was doing it again. The crowding thing. But she refused to be intimidated by him.
Perhaps “intimidated” was the wrong word. “Overwhelmed” would be more apt.
He still didn’t scare her, despite the fact he would be a good eight inches taller if she weren’t wearing heels, and he had at least fifty pounds of pure muscle on her from what she could tell. As a matter of fact, the opposite was true. Everly was inexplicably drawn to him, and if anything, she wanted to get closer. He smelled like an alluring combination of dark spice and fresh rain, and she had the sudden urge to bury her face in the open “V” of his shirt and press her lips to the steady pulse she could see beating there. Heat emanated from his body, surrounding her with his warmth. Something she found strange, though she couldn’t put her finger as to why. But it was nothing compared to the blaze burning behind his eyes when she finally met them with her own, though the rest of his expression was carefully blank.
“What about you?” He lifted a red curl from her shoulder and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger. “What’s your story, Everly?”
“This isn’t about me,” she told him. At least, she thought she said it out loud. It was hard to concentrate on anything over the racing of her pulse and the heaviness in her loins.
His eyes dropped to her mouth for a brief moment before he locked his gaze on hers, and at that very moment she swore he could see right through her façade.
“Are you sure?”
Her blood chilled, cooling her ardor for this man she’d only just met. Surely, he couldn’t know what she was really up to. Her boss didn’t even know what she was really up to. “What do you mean?”
A smile teased the corners of his mouth, and he leaned down until those perfectly sculpted lips were less than an inch from hers. Everly held her ground, part of her—a very large part, she had to admit—wishing he would close the distance between them.
She wondered what it would feel like to be kissed by him. To be surrounded by all that heat and power pulsing from him in waves. To watch him become weak with lust. To see him lose control. To be the one who caused him to drop the rigid command he held over himself.
Her eyes closed, and her lips parted on a sharp inhale as he leaned closer still. Warm lips, both soft and firm, skimmed over hers with a touch like a feather, only to leave her cold as he tucked his face into the side of her neck. His beard tickled her skin, making her shiver. But other than that involuntary movement and her harsh breathing, she found she couldn’t move, couldn’t react. She had the distinct feeling he was scenting her, like an animal did its prey, and she nearly burst out of her own skin when she felt his lips press against the pulse in her throat. Before she could comprehend or react to what was happening, the cool air from the air conditioner replaced the warmth against her throat, and Everly opened her eyes to find him once again blocking the door as if he’d never moved.
Except his appearance gave him away. The man she saw now both shocked and excited her, and she stepped toward him without realizing it, stopping obediently when he held up his hand. It was quite obvious now why it was strange to her that his body should radiate such warmth.
He was one of them. A supernatural creature living amongst humans like her. The rumors she’d heard were true! And her instinct to come to this hole in the wall bar had been right. And though she’d hoped to encounter one here, dreamed of it, she was in no way prepared for the reality.
Hawke’s eyes burned, black as oil, and when he spoke, she saw the tips of what she could only describe as fangs. “You’re going to walk out of this office and get in your car and leave. You won’t speak to anyone on the way out. You’re going to drive home. Tomorrow, you’ll remember you weren’t able to make it here tonight because you had to work late. You’ll plan to come back tomorrow night. You won’t remember me, this conversation, or anyone you met here tonight. Do you understand?”
Confused as to how he thought she could ever forget this night—or him—she nevertheless nodded. “I understand.”
Hawke moved away from the door until he was standing before her. Lifting his hand, he brushed his fingers over her jawline and down her throat, smiling at the goose flesh he raised. “Goodbye, Everly.” He leaned down until they were eye to eye. “You need to get out of here. Now.”
He didn’t actually speak the words. His mouth never moved, or if it did she didn’t see it. Yet, she heard him in her head. He wasn’t threatening her. He was warning her. Feeling like any moment she would wake up from a dream, she nodded. “Okay. Goodbye, Hawke.”
He opened the door for her. She didn’t hesitate but left as he’d told her to, walking out of the now crowded club and to her car. When she reached it, she gave the door a good yank, got in, and started the engine.
Heart racing like she’d just narrowly avoided a head on collision with an eighteen-wheeler, Everly hit the gas and got the hell out of there.
Chapter 2
Hawke remained in the office for a good five minutes after the reporter left. It took him that long to repress the urge to follow her. Every cell in his body screamed at him to go after the persistent woman. And not for reasons that made any particular kind of sense. He’d never had such a strong reaction to a human before.
A woman.
It was fucking unsettling.
From the moment she’d walked in, fiery red hair curling in crazy corkscrews all over her head—in direct contrast to the tame appearance of her business attire—it was like someone had flicked a switch inside of him. She wasn’t a beauty in the normal sense of the word. Her gray eyes were too bright and set a bit too far apart beneath dark brows that were refreshingly natural, not plucked into something that resembled the slash of a sharpie marker. Her nose had exactly three freckles across the top, easily noticeable against the fairness of her skin, and her bottom lip was slightly fuller than the upper.
It made him want to bite it.
And when she’d smiled, he’d noticed her two front teeth were longer than the rest, giving her a slight resemblance to a rabbit.
She was also deaf, or very nearly so.
Most people wouldn’t have noticed. She must have worked hard to be able to speak as well as she did, cultivating her words and her voice, which only showed him how self-conscious she was that she was different.
